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What is a social venture?

A social venture is any undertaking (business, program, community initiative) that combines financial sustainability (a source of ongoing revenue) with a social good (community benefit, climate benefit). In our case, we are looking specifically for social ventures that produce a climate benefit by, for example, increasing energy efficiency, reducing emissions or reducing waste. What might such a venture look like? It might be a group of local merchants coming together to offer a low-carbon delivery service for their neighbourhood clients, it might be an initiative to install a shared geothermal system in a townhouse complex, it might be a business that helps homeowners improve their energy efficiency by training youth in home energy retrofits. These are double bottom line ventures that produce both an ongoing financial return that keeps their lights on and employees paid and a benefit for the environment and the community. Maybe what you are already doing meets these goals, in which case you can enter the ClimateSpark Challenge and potentially get access to expert enterprise coaching and up to $500,000 in funding. Maybe you are planning such a venture and could benefit from this kind of assistance and funding. Or maybe you want to expand an existing enterprise to get into this fast growing field. Whatever the case, you can gain profile for your venture and great feedback on your ideas by entering the ClimateSpark Challenge!

The ClimateSpark Social Venture Challenge is a project of:

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Final report now available

What worked? What needed improvement? What motivated contestants and what got community members excited? We've captured insights on the ClimateSpark Social Venture Challenge in a final report that, in the spirit of open collaboration, we are sharing widely. We hope these findings will be useful to anyone interested in open innovation and crowd sourcing. Meanwhile, they are already informing our thinking about future Challenges. Have an idea for a challenge or interested in using the ClimateSpark platform for your own challenge? We'd love to talk - contact Mary Pickering to start the conversation.